Learning Hebrew: Part 4

With the Jewish New Year around the corner, I thought it would be interesting to do a blog post on how to say the months of the year, and also the days of the week, in Hebrew.

Months of the Year 

There are two very distinct differences between the Jewish and Gregorian calendars. The first being that the Near Year starts in the middle of September as opposed to the first of January, respectively. In Israel, the New Year celebration is called Rosh Hashanah. 

The second major difference is that the beginning of the Jewish months start in the middle of the Gregorian months. The image below shows what the Jewish months are and how to spell them in Hebrew.

Days of the Week

Like the months of the year, the days of the week in Israel also differ in their start times from what I am used to in Canada. Here, the beginning of the week starts on a Sunday, meaning that Friday and Saturday are the days of the weekend. Saturday, known as Shabbat, is considered a religious time devoted to being with your family. Something else that differs from Canadian culture is that the start of the day in Israel begins at sundown, so Friday evening is the actual start of Shabbat. 

The days of the week literally translate to 1^st day, 2^nd day, and so forth until Shabbat. In fact, you can see some similarity between the days of the week and the Hebrew numbers that I wrote about in Learning Hebrew Part 2. Take for example Friday (Shishi), the 6^th day, which closely resembles how to say the number 6 (Shesh).